Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Thursday, March 28th, 2024

Pros and Cons of Access to Information Law

Democracy ensures the rule of majority by preservation of its core value, keeping the masses informed about every single development in socio-political and economic affairs of the government. In this system of government, the ‘say’ of ordinary masses are given great weightage, who are kept known via unhindered exchange of information between government and masses. Thus the public representatives hence are left with least chance manipulation, but have to follow the due course of action because of being closely watched by their Electoral College. The worth of informed civilians is immense in democracy, having kept that in mind the Access to information Law was deeply felt to get ratified by legislative assembly.

Finally the Afghanistan’s president Ashraf Ghani signed an Access to Information Law for Afghanistan. It was indeed a great achievement by the war-torn country. By getting the law signed, Afghanistan turns to be 101st country to have an Access to information Law. The law approved by Afghan lawmakers consists of 6 chapters and 32 articles. For the first time in Afghan history, citizens and journalists get access to information through state institutions. Next step is the difficult task of realizing the law in practice.

It earned a great win for media bodies and advocates working on rationalization of media laws. The supporters of free media and rights to freedom of speech had long been striving to make the government pass the Access to Information Law. It took the civil society organizations and media outlets long to introduce a draft regarding access to information and get that duly signed. The media functionaries warmly received the move and termed it a positive step for promoting transparency and accountability.

The law revives up the international standards and will have major effects in limiting corruption, localizing democracy and strengthening the people's political and social participation in state building. People will gain access to state and public budgets, and official spokespeople will be inclined to share information with journalists and citizens.  The law conveys the values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and it respects the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

There is, however, still quite some way to go, given Afghanistan is worst plagued by widespread corruption, and having a great law on paper does not mean much if it is not implemented in practice. Implementation of the law is one of the biggest challenges. A joint working force was developed between presidential office and civil society to monitor the implementation of the law. Following that a nominal commission was constituted to monitor the aforesaid law.

According to this law, the Monitoring Commission on Access to Information can only recommend disciplinary actions against violators of the act and no fines are specified if information is not provided. It is feared in the dominant environment of favoritism and misuse of power the needed information might be concealed and kept out of the reach of media bodies Consequently, the law should be amended to ensure the information hiders are punished and fined. Imparting a degree of independence to the newly created Commission on Access to Information can be an encouraging step ahead.

There is some underlining reservations pertaining the dispatch of certain sensitive information if shared could equally harm and reverse the developments achieved to the length of time, should be share, isn’t obligatory. Nonetheless, the information dealing issues of human rights and use and misuse of public resources should inevitably be shared renders an uncompromising and appealing demand ever made by media bodies.

The facts and figures on ground depicts a degree of restraint exercised by corresponding officials to dispatch information, complicates the work of journalists who find minimal application of the law. Earlier, officials in several provinces said they had been told by the Ministry of Interior (MoI) not to share information with media outlets. In contrary the sources of presidential palace states the Security Council should facilitate the responsible official from each province provide information to the journalists.

It was this officials’ stance that enraged the journalists with the Afghanistan Independent Journalist Association (AIJA) in a statement said that Security Council barred provincial officials from sharing information. The statement said that the Ministry of Interior had been directed to issue media with information on security related issues in future. On the other hand, MoI Spokesman Sadique Sadiqui said: “We have public affairs officials in provinces are tasked to share information with media on regular basis.”

The state of affairs reflects a great degree of confusion on working mechanism of flow of information from concerned department to journalists, particularly in the provinces. However, it clearly manifests the toughened course to seek relevant information about governmental affairs. It is therefore; previously some civil society organizations and media-men demanded the president to help amend the relevant law to make access easy to information.

Hence it is suggested that a new draft should be introduced containing a degree of clarification on information flow mechanism, legal actions whether information aren’t deliberately concealed and the regulatory principles barring the sensationalism and unfound accusation against any citizen. The new draft must contain the formation of an independent and neutral commission to be assigned the task of investigating complaints, lodged against any public official. Moreover, the complaints investigation mechanism should be fair and transparent; to make it sure the complaints are heard and addressed properly devoid of keeping political, social and economical status of person in regard.